


In Another Life, I Would Be Your Girl (We'd Keep All Our Promises, Be Us Against The World)

by What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: And I REGRET, And she desperately wishes she didn't, Angst, Beta! For Once!, Carrie Wilson was a bad friend too, Carrie Wilson was a good friend, Carrie is human, Carrie still loves Julie and Flynn, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I gave myself Carrie Wilson feels, Ignore me projecting my copious amounts of ruined friendships onto Carrie, Regret, The Author Regrets Everything, let her have Feelings, parentheses are my guilty pleasure, ruined friendships, this one be yowchy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:00:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28445052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion/pseuds/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion
Summary: Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all went wrong.Because Carrie could still think back to nights up too late singing to shitty movies, and running through the streets barefoot in the blinding afternoon sunlight, and laughing like tomorrow would never come, and she can still remember never thinking anything would change.Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all went wrong. But it did, it did. It did, and now everything is wrong. And Carrie had no clue how to fix it.----Sometimes ghosts aren't really ghosts at all, just memories of things you ruined, and loves that can't be put back. Sometimes ghosts are just the splintered remains of something you don't have anymore. And Carrie Wilson has so many ghosts.A study in ruined friendships, and broken promises, and Carrie Wilson, who tries so very hard to seem perfect, and can't ever seem to totally forget all the skeletons in her closet.
Relationships: Carrie Wilson & Flynn, Carrie Wilson & Julie Molina, Carrie Wilson & Nick
Comments: 13
Kudos: 29





	In Another Life, I Would Be Your Girl (We'd Keep All Our Promises, Be Us Against The World)

**Author's Note:**

> I got Carrie Wilson feels all of a sudden, so I wrote ten pages of oomph in one sitting. 
> 
> I have a lot a old friendships that just kind of... faded out. And there wasn't really any specific catalyst, or anything that went sour between us fast, or any kind of huge drama. We just grew up, and grew apart, and now we aren't... 
> 
> Well, we aren't really anything, and there are a few ex-friends that have no issues being nasty to me, and I just feel like so many times in literature, authors go into how awful breakups are, and how awful severing romantic ties is, but, (and maybe this is just me never having dated anyone and not knowing what it feels like) I think growing apart from people you loved platonically and would have died for is just as painful, if not more so. The regret lingers, and the love festers, and it leaves you wondering if there was anything you could have done to make it turn out different. But mostly, you just still love them, and you miss them, and you don't want to do either, and it just hurts. 
> 
> So suddenly I just had strong feelings about Carrie, and Julie, and Flynn, and how splitting up probably cost them so much emotionally, even if they pretended to not be affected by it. 
> 
> Anyway! Ignore me ranting in the safety of anonymity. This fic is certainly something. I've warned you. Read at your own risk. 
> 
> This is just Carrie, being complicated and screwed up inside, and trying very hard to not miss everything that she screwed up. Because everyone is human, and everyone regrets, and everyone misses someone they wish they didn't, and everyone has something that they know they can't fix. And even if she's the antagonist, Carrie is still just a human, doing what humans do. Living, and loving, and losing, and picking up the pieces of what is left.

Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all went wrong. 

Because Carrie could still think back to nights up too late singing to shitty movies, and running through the streets barefoot in the blinding afternoon sunlight, and laughing like tomorrow would never come, and she can still remember never thinking anything would change. 

(No one ever told her that you grow, and you change, and sometimes you become someone you would hate in another world. No one ever told her she didn’t have to be what the world expected of her.)

(That’s a lie. Here she is, still lying to herself.)

(Three people told her she could be more, with honest eyes and blinding smiles, loving her, her, her. She didn’t listen to any of them.)

(No one told her she would miss them so much.) 

Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all went wrong. But it did, it did. It did, and now everything is wrong. And Carrie had no clue how to fix it. 

\----

Carrie Wilson’s first memories are of Julie Molina. It would almost be ironic now, if it didn’t hurt so much.

Carrie’s first memories are vague impressions of her father’s laughter, and sharing ice cream cones with Julie, running down slip-and-slides with Julie, singing to the radio with Julie as Rose laughed from the front seat, dancing with Julie, laughing with Julie, wrestling with Julie, with Julie, with Julie, with Julie. Always with Julie. 

When did that stop happening? When did her memories stop having the little tag,  _ with Julie?  _

It occurred to Carrie that she didn’t know, mostly because only recently had it become a tag at all. For so long, Julie had been so woven up in the fabric of her world that trying to untangle Julie from herself was like trying to unweave silk. Only recently had Julie become a tag in her memories, an add-on. Something to stitch in at the end with instructions for handling.

(Carrie needed the instructions for handling. It was so easy to slice up her palms on Julie Molina. Julie Molina, and everything that she used to be for Carrie, and everything that she isn’t for Carrie anymore.)

(And isn’t that it, at the end of the day? Isn’t that why Carrie needs the instructions, the tag that says  _ handle with care?  _ Because Julie Molina didn’t stop being everything. She just slipped through Carrie’s leaking fingers, and left her behind, trying to figure out how to be everything. Trying to figure out how to unweave silk.)

Carrie had asked her dad before, and he said she met Julie in preschool, and they fit in like missing puzzle pieces. Carrie couldn’t ever remember not knowing Julie, and she was pretty sure Julie couldn’t remember not knowing Carrie. 

All Carrie knew was that Julie didn’t care that her dad was famous, except in the sense that she loved his music. Julie treated her like she was just another girl from school. Like there was nothing special about her at all.

(Even though to this day, when she’s nervous before a performance, she remembers a random sleepover at Julie’s house, one of hundreds, forgotten but for the memory of Julie looking at her, eyes glinting in the darkness of her room, whispering,  _ You’re not just a little bit special, Carrie. You’re all the way special. You can do anything, I know it. I believe in you.  _

Carrie had taken a shaky breath and Julie’s hand, and whispered back,  _ You’ll always be there for me? _

Julie had smiled in the darkness, and squeezed Carrie’s hand, and whispered,  _ I promise. _ )

(Julie had kept her promise, with this one throwaway memory that Carrie kept guiltily pulling back up to lean on, even when it made her feel sick to her stomach, because why did she deserve the ghost of Julie’s smile? Julie had kept her promise. She was always there for Carrie.)

(Carrie didn’t return the favor. It only made her gag bile and guilt some days.)

Julie didn’t cower around her when she yelled, and she didn’t put up with spoiled temper tantrums, and she wasn’t afraid to call Carrie out when she was being a bad friend. Carrie loved it.

And there was something about Julie Molina. Something that filled a room without trying; too much soul for such a small body. Julie pulled people in like moths to a flame without even meaning to, and Carrie was no different from all the others falling into her radiance.

If people were solar systems, Julie Molina would be a sun. Burning, brilliant, and drawing in everyone around her. Pulling them in and pushing them away, giving light and warmth and filling miles of emptiness with her own presence. 

If people were solar systems, Julie Molina would be a sun, and Carrie Wilson would be a comet, flying through forever until the sun pulled her in, caught in its orbit as much as its wonder. Maybe she would stay there forever, spinning around this sun, or maybe she would just slow for a bit, then keep going in a different direction. Either way, she would never be the same.

For the first six years of their lives in school, it was just Julie and Carrie, Carrie and Julie. Them against the world. 

And then came Flynn. 

If people were solar systems, Flynn Hyber would be a star. One of the huge ones, that glow blue or red or gold against the sky. The ones that seem like they would never move, just dance with the music of the cosmos, rising and falling with the dawn. 

If people were solar systems, Flynn Hyber and Julie Molina would be stars, ones that commanded the universe, spinning in a dance of millenia and love and gravity and inevitable destruction. The kind of stars that made nebulae and galaxies, stardust to spray over the sky, a monument for eternity; stunning, even in their own death. 

It was no shock then, that when Flynn pranced into their fifth grade classroom, sassed the kids sitting in the front row, the kid wearing the ‘Pro Life’ sticker, and the teacher all in the same breath, then grinned like a wolf, sharp teeth and raw glee and a confidence to burn Carrie alive, Julie’s jaw dropped, and she looked thunderstruck. 

So when the frowning teacher had asked Flynn coldly to, “Take a seat, Miss Hyber,” Carrie had waved at her from under the desk, and cocked her head at the free seat next to a still-gaping Julie. 

Flynn had grinned at her, sharp teeth and wolf eyes, and just a hint of something softer beneath it all, and Carrie knew she had made the right choice. 

Flynn slid into their tiny group like puzzle pieces, and suddenly two was three, and Carrie couldn’t be happier. 

Flynn was sharp in a way Julie wasn’t, sharp in a way more similar to Carrie’s own jaggedness, softened by years of Julie’s ferocious, warming love. They clashed sometimes, because of that. Too similar, Carrie supposed. Too matched, in their snapping sharpness. 

Julie was a good mediator. For all her softness, there was steel in her spine, and one cannot be a star without flames. Julie burned fiercer than both of them combined, and their sharpness was no match for the melting power of her burning love.

It worked. 

For the next three years, it was the three of them. Julie and Carrie and Flynn, Flynn and Carrie and Julie. The three of them against anything.

They still went running down the street barefoot. They got three ice cream cones now, and all ate each others’ too, being overly loud and dipping fingers in each other’s cones, smearing sugar on each other’s noses, and laughing until their chests ached.

(They always went to the same shop. It was closest to Flynn’s house. A tiny, family-run business called  _ Aunt Marie’s _ . They always sat at the far left table out on the cracked cobblestone in the sun, even though one leg was shorter than the others, and the table wobbled, and Julie had almost broken her ankle once on the loose cobblestone beneath her chair. They never switched tables. 

It was almost telling, that Carrie could still remember their orders. 

Julie loved the banana ice cream in a waffle cone, size medium, and though she would never admit it, she loved it when Carrie paid for another scoop of strawberry and pretended she didn’t. 

Flynn loved the piña colada ice cream in a sugar cone, covered in red M&Ms. 

She insisted on it, every time, even when Carrie complained that it was an atrocity. She would simply sick her tongue out at Carrie, and say, ‘ _ My  _ atrocity,’ and Carrie would sigh and Flynn would smirk and Julie would laugh and steal M&Ms for both of them off Flynn’s cone while she wasn't looking.)

(Carrie doesn’t go past Flynn’s street anymore. She can’t look at the tiny store set back into the row. She can’t look at the table in the far left out on the patio, the one that you wouldn’t see was leaning if you didn’t know to look for it. Carrie doesn’t go to  _ Aunt Marie’s  _ anymore. Even the thought of it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Besides, she doesn’t know what she would even order.)

(She thinks of banana ice cream and red M&Ms, and ignores the pit in her stomach, and walks past an ice cream store set into a store front, and very firmly does not miss them.) 

Three years. And then, and then, and then. Because isn’t that Carrie’s life? Just a series of  _ and thens,  _ one after the other. Just a series of gravities, pulling her in and spinning her around and wrecking her orbit in the best and worst way possible.

Three years. And then Nick. 

Carrie met Nick at a school dance. He had grinned at her, and yelled over the shitty music playing, “Hey! You’re the girl in my math class, right? The smart one who always knows the answers?” And in the darkness and the flashing lights that  _ someone  _ must have approved, though why they did, Carrie wasn’t sure, his grin looked like starlight and cosmos, and Carrie was falling. She always was a sucker for someone who saw  _ her  _ underneath who everyone expected her to be.

(She always was a sucker for people who loved  _ her.  _ She was just so awful at staying as someone you could love.) 

Nick fell into their group like another puzzle piece, and for a while, it was the four of them, and they were happy, and the four of them was enough.

For a while. 

But how long is a while? This is where Carrie’s memory fades. How long is a while? Not long enough, the bitter part of her brain tells her. This is the part of her that still aches. The part of her that she thinks will always ache. 

Somewhere along the line, somewhere along this fading while, Carrie started drifting away. She started cutting ties, ignoring people she used to give smiles to as she passed. 

People expected her to be Daddy’s girl, the rich, spoiled little brat who got everything she wanted. Carrie was so tired of having to always prove them wrong. 

Carrie had always been a comet. Following the gravity of stronger things. She was so tired of proving them wrong. So she started playing the part.

At first, it was just in public. At home, she was still just Carrie. Carrie, who laughed with Flynn as Nick failed at Just Dance, and sang with Julie even if she couldn’t hit the same notes, and went dancing in the rain sometimes. 

But then. ( _ But then _ . Is it any different from,  _ and then _ ? Yes, Carrie thinks. Because  _ and then _ only ever gave her people.  _ But then  _ costs her people.  _ But then  _ costs her everything.)

But then it stopped being a part. It just started being… her. 

Carrie had heard ‘fake it ‘till you make it’. It just always seemed fake. Until it was far too not fake. 

She started to be nasty. Nasty in a real way. Nasty in a way where she really did hate everyone. She started clashing with Flynn more. She started clashing with Julie more.

Julie had never been afraid to call her out when she was being a bad friend. Carrie used to love that. Now she hated it, like she hated everything. 

Suddenly Nick was the mediator, but Nick was too soft for that, none of Julie’s fire in his bones. 

They fell apart like all good things do. Painfully.

In a bid at a make-up, Julie invited the other three to a sleepover at her house.  _ Just like we used to,  _ she had petitioned them, her eyes bright and sad and hopeful.  _ Just like it used to be.  _ Desperate.

Carrie had rolled her eyes and sighed,  _ Fine. I guess I don’t have anything better to do. _

They had made it to dinner before shouting at each other. Carrie had been in the middle of beginning a very nasty sentence to throw at Julie when she saw Carlos, cowering in the doorway with wide, terrified eyes. 

Carlos was the closest thing she had ever had to a little brother. In the end, it wasn’t Rose’s scolding that kept her scorching words tucked under her tongue, swallowed down like bad Pepto Bismol. It was Carlos’s wide, distressed eyes trained on her. 

They finished dinner in icy silence. That night, long after Flynn and Nick had fallen asleep, Carrie laid awake, staring at Julie’s ceiling, wondering when this house stopped feeling like home. Or, more accurately, when she had stopped feeling like she belonged in it.

And then Julie had said, quietly, “Carrie?”

Carrie had bitten her tongue, and held back sudden tears, and said nothing. Julie kept going.

“I know you’re awake,” Julie said quietly. “It’s always us. The last ones awake. But, you don’t have to talk to me. I’m just going to talk, because… because I want to say something, and I feel like this might be the last time you hear me.”

She was silent for a few seconds, in that way Julie only was when collecting her thoughts. 

Carrie didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to. But she found herself holding her breath.

“I want you to know,” Julie said, her voice only a little shaky. “That you don’t have to… be who they think you are. I know they all think you’re just the rich kid, but… but I want you to know, that you don’t have to be who they think you are.”

Carrie’s breath was heavy in her lungs, and it ached, it ached, the pull of Julie Molina’s gravity, almost too strong for her to escape.

“I love you,” Julie whispered. “The girl who played in the mud with me when we were little, and burned her feet on the concrete running in the summer, and laughed like no one in the world mattered but us. I love her. And I want you to know that… you can keep being her, and I’ll be here. I’d love to see who she becomes.”

Carrie swallowed. She rolled over, and didn’t answer, and very fimly didn’t cry. Carrie Wilson didn’t cry over Julie Molina. 

It was the last sleepover the four of them had. 

Carrie finished what she had started, and cut Julie and Flynn out. It only burned like acid in her veins some days.

Then Rose got sick. 

She got bad. Fast. Before any of them even had time to process, she was gone.

If people were solar systems, Julie Molina would be a sun. And for the first time in Carrie’s memory, the flames had gone out.

Carrie didn’t go to the funeral. Neither did Nick. It ached. Neither of them would ever admit it. 

A year passed, and Julie Molina looked more and more like she had finally burnt out with each passing day. 

Carrie didn’t care. She  _ didn’t.  _

She ran from the piano, shaking fingers and shaking voice and flameless. Her last chance. Carrie didn’t care. She didn’t. (She  _ didn’t. _ )

And then, and then. Julie Molina was on a stage, with a piano and a spotlight and a voice like starlight in space. Julie Molina was on a stage, with a microphone and two lungs and a grin like ferocity, and she was burning, burning, flames and glory and gravity, gravity, gravity.

Julie Molina would be a sun, and her flames were back, and so was her steel, and her eyes didn’t waver when they met Carrie’s. 

Julie Molina was a sun, flames and glory and gravity, and a spot in the music program was hers.

Carrie hated her.

Weeks passed, and Julie burned brighter every day. A sun, bigger, and brighter. Flames and glory and gravity, and the school was falling into her orbit. 

Carrie passed her sometimes, in the hall. Julie and Flynn, leaning on each other’s lockers, smiling and laughing and burning, not missing her at all. And if Carrie’s fingers would tighten on her books, and her gait would grow stiffer, and her chest would ache with a longing she couldn’t ever carve out enough to be rid of, well. It wasn't like anyone was around to care anymore.

(Julie Molina was a sun, and Nick a comet like herself, and he had fallen into her orbit, and Carrie was hurtling through the darkness of the universe again. Alone.) 

Julie’s band was… weird. Julie was helpless with anything fancier than a laptop. How did she have holograms like that? Try as she might, Carrie couldn’t come up with anything. 

But then again, what did she know? Not Julie. Not anymore. 

Julie had a gig. And Carrie’s dad had two tickets to the Orpheum. 

Julie came onstage, back straight and chin high, a red flower cupped carefully in her hands. 

Julie was on a stage, with a crowd and a voice and a power that, deep down, Carrie knew she didn’t have. Julie was on a stage, with a band and a smile and a song of hope and strength and fire, flames and glory and gravity. Gravity.

And Carrie was in a crowd, with a pit in her stomach and a million memories of a million days of love; a closet full of skeletons and a sudden realization that she still, after everything, loved Julie Molina. That she had never left her orbit after all.

(Carrie was in a horrible habit of loving people who loved  _ her, _ and she was in a horrible habit of losing them.) 

(Carrie had always loved Julie Molina, and she had never stopped loving her, apparently. Because Carrie didn’t know how to not love Julie Molina, at least a little bit. Carrie didn’t know how to unweave silk.)

Carrie was in a crowd, on her feet, with a pit in her stomach and a closet full of skeletons; a smile on her face, and hands too busy clapping to untangle anything.

And Julie Molina was on a stage, alone, and she looked devastated. Smiling, and burning, and breaking, and not okay at all.

Her dad stuttered something about, “We need to leave. Now.” Then he was dragging her towards the exit. 

For a split second, before she slid into the car, she caught a glimpse of an alley behind the Orpheum. Julie, crumpled against a wall. Even after everything, Carrie still knew her. Knew Julie. 

Knew the way she laughed, and sang, and danced in the mirror when she brushed her teeth. And she knew this. This curled up pose, hunched spine and set face, lips trembling and eyes closed against tears. Julie was trying very hard not to cry, and Carrie wanted everything she had always wanted. To be right by Julie Molina, making her smile.

But then her dad was shouting, and she was sliding in the car, and they were leaving. (And  _ but then  _ had always taken people from her. Even if she had always kind of hoped that Julie would be an  _ and then. _ )

Carrie went home. She didn’t know where her dad went to, with his frenzied muttering and terrified eyes. Carrie walked up to her room, and got under her bed. She dug out a box. Cardboard, covered in glitter and posted pictures of palm trees. She had never been strong enough to throw it away.

Carrie opened the box, opened the closet. And all her skeletons came pouring out. She pulled out pictures. Slip-and-slides, and banana ice cream, and that one tree in Julie’s yard they had loved to climb until they were too big. A thousand memories of a thousand days of love. A thousand skeletons that couldn’t be put back.

Carrie Wilson didn’t cry over Flynn Hyber and Julie Molina. 

Carrie, just Carrie, clutched her photographs to her chest and dropped her face in her hands and sobbed.

Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all stopped being everything. Looking back, she isn’t sure when she ever decided she could afford to lose them. Lose herself.

Because Carrie could still remember ice cream on a wobbly table, and slip-and-slides that tasted like soap, and singing in the dark, and laughing like tomorrow would never come. She can still remember never thinking anything would change. 

(No one ever told her you can lose yourself by losing others. No one ever told her life would hurt this much.)

(But a girl laid in the darkness with a smile like flames, and told her she would be there. Always.)

(God. God. She misses them. She misses herself. She misses not breathing through all these holes in her chest that she put there.)

Looking back, she isn’t sure where it all went wrong. But it did, it did. 

It did, and now everything is wrong. And Carrie had no clue how to fix it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Are you okay? I wasn't.
> 
> From here on out, this note is mostly just going to be me ranting, so, like. You've been warned. 
> 
> Loving is complicated. And loving someone who isn't yours to love anymore hurts. This fic is mostly just me processing old feelings, the ones I let sit because it was easier to just ignore it and act like it all didn't hurt, and I didn't care at all. 
> 
> I projected my feelings onto Carrie because, one, the girl is, in the show, pretty one-dimensional, and even antagonists deserve better than that. Two, Nick's tiny little comment post-Bright? About how they used to be friends? And then Carrie got so mad and defensive and totally lashed out even though he meant well? That hit home a little. Because that's the ache speaking. The one that you ignore until something pokes it just right, and then it blows up and everything aches, and you just miss someone that you wish you could just be done loving, because what is broken can't be fixed, but you'll always love them a little, because there are some people who were just a part of you for long enough that you don't know how to not love them, at least a little. 
> 
> I have lots of feelings about Carrie, wrecking everything she loves and hating herself for it, and wishing for do-overs she knows she can't have. I have lots of feelings about Carrie, still loving the people she drove away, and hating herself for it, and wishing she could just stop loving them. Wishing she had been better, so she didn't have to stop loving them at all.
> 
> Losing people just hurts. And it doesn't stop hurting. Not in my experience. You just keep on loving them, and missing them, and wondering if anything could have been different, and knowing that even if it could have it doesn't matter, because it's already too late. 
> 
> So I just shoved all my repressed feelings onto Carrie to process my own grief over people that aren't mine anymore. (Because isn't that what it is? Grief. You're bitter, and angry, and tired, but you still love them. So you're grieving someone who isn't gone, but might as well be, because either way it hurts, and either way you're grieving.)
> 
> Anyway! Hope you enjoyed my Trauma™ ! Basically all I need is a Carrie redemption arc, because I want the girls to be like the reverse of the boys. Just Chaos. 
> 
> (Constructive criticism is appreciated, as well as grammar advice and corrections.)
> 
> Hope you weren't too ruined by this! Thanks for reading!


End file.
